privileges and appurtenances, and all my right, title, interest, property and claim in and to the same and every part thereof. To have and to hold the said messuage, theatre and premises, with the appurtenances, unto the said Ann Barry, her heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns, to the only proper use and behalf of the said Ann Barry, her heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns, for ever; subject nevertheless, to the payment of two several annuities of sixty pounds and forty pounds to James Carter, during the respective lives of Ann Carter and Julia Carter, and charged upon the said premises by indenture, bearing date the twenty-third day of April, one thousand seven hundred and sixty-eight, for the purpose therein mentioned. All the rest, residue, and remainder of my estate and effects whatsoever and wheresoever, real and personal, I give, devise, and bequeath unto the said Ann Barry, her heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns. And I make, constitute, and appoint her, the said Ann Barry, to be sole executor (sic) of this my will, and hereby revoking all other wills by me made, I declare this to be my last will and testament. In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal, this twenty-fourth day of January one thousand seven hundred and seventy. SPRANGER BARRY. L. S.

Signed, sealed, published, and declared, by the said Spranger Barry, as and for his last will and testament, in the presence of us, who, in his presence, at his request, and in the presence of each other, have set our names as witnesses to the execution hereof.

'DAVID RICHARDS.

'ALBANY WALLIS (almost the legal guardian of actors). 'HARRY BURT, Clerk to Mr. Wallis.'

The reader might indeed complain if, after showing how he disposed of his property, I declined to record how his friend and countryman, Murphy, disposed of his merits as

an actor:

'Harmonious Barry! with what varied art
His grief, rage, tenderness assail'd the heart!
Of plaintive Otway now no more the boast!
And Shakespeare grieves for his Othello lost.

Oft on this spot the tuneful Swan expir'd,
Warbling his grief; you listen'd and admir'd.
'Twas then but fancied woe; now every Muse,
Her lyre unstrung, with tears his urn bedews.'

On the 1st of February, 1777, a tragedy was acted at Covent Garden Theatre, called Sir Thomas Overbury. That, at all events, unfortunate man, Savage, with a perseverance that indicated very limited powers for the drama, had written a second tragedy on this his favourite subject. Cave bought it, and it was touched upon by Garrick and Colman and William Wood fall. I think it was not quite peculiar to Savage, though he would be more indignant than other men at the practice, that there was supposed to exist some stage mystery, in which only certain persons were initiated; and accordingly it was suggested to Savage that he ought to put his play into the hands of Thomson and Mallet to be made fit for representation :—as if Savage, a man who had led a town life, and had some power even as an actor, wanted any stage knowledge that Thomson or Mallet could supply! But thus even the genius of the unfortunate is constantly insulted, and a play that does not tread the beaten track is driven from the course, or broke in to the required sameness by the empiricism of a manager's advisers. This has produced among us, of late years, an invariable coup de théâtre in the last act of all serious dramas :-A castle must be besieged, a mine must be sprung, and the spectators must be dazzled, and stunned, and suffocated, for effect. The passion of Love has much to answer, as engrossing the great bulk of our drama, and compelling catastrophes that differ only as to happiness or misery, death or marriage :but the image of War has taken its turn to reign-our triumphs of late as a great military power have crowded our stages with regular armies (not prompter's troops), bands from the parade, and banners which surpass the long unequalled cognizances of the Lord Mayor's Show.

In Savage we have been considering a man far from amiable, whom modern discoveries affirm even to have been an impostor; but to whom some weight attaches from his connection with Dr. Johnson, and must for ever attach, in consequence of a biography, written in the feelings of friendship, but with the spirit of moral wisdom.

On the 3d of February died Hugh Kelly, a dramatist of slender power, a man of humble and modest diligence. He had dared to write in support of government, and when, in the stormy days of Wilkes and Junius, he addressed his Word to the Wise from the stage, a faction damned it on its first appearance. His widow and children now derived assistance from this sentenced play, which Dr. Johnson, another Hercules, restored, like Alcestis, from the shades. He wrote a prologue, in his mildest tone, yet full of moral dignity and beauty :—

'Where aught of bright or fair the piece displays,
Approve it only-'tis too late to praise.

If want of skill or want of care appear,
Forbear to hiss-the poet cannot hear.

By all like him must praise and blame be found
At best a fleeting gleam, or empty sound.'

But excelling this infinitely is the close, in which he announces the triumph of benevolence :

'Yet then shall calm reflection bless the night,
When liberal pity dignify'd delight;

When Pleasure fired her torch at Virtue's flame,
And Mirth was bounty with an humbler name.

Pope, by infinite pains, elaborated his composition into verse like this: the early and continued discipline of Johnson's mind, I persuade myself, made him flow, without present labour, in such correct and perfect expression.

CHAPTER IV

THE author suits his own convenience in the distribution of his work into chapters. Were he to consider time, I mean so much of it as constitutes a season, as the measure of a chapter, the division must be long or short with the importance of its events. When, therefore, any subjects claim very particular consideration, the reader may not regret what would otherwise branch out too far is divided, and that two chapters may pass between the winter and the summer of any given year.

that

On the 22d of February 1777, Arthur Murphy produced, at Covent Garden Theatre, his admirable comedy of Know your own Mind, a play written with, I think, more care than he commonly bestowed; the dialogue being much more pointed, the consequence probably of frequent revision, and possessing much of that charm which Vanbrugh taught in his comedies-language easy to be spoken. However, often as he might revise his work, he has repeated a phrase, and that, unfortunately for his taste, a vulgarism, in two pages exactly opposite to each other; and both from the mouth of the same speaker, and his wit moreover, Dashwood. The reader will find them in the printed collection of Murphy's works, vol. iv. pp. 22, 23. Up to his eyes Richard was in love with her,'-and of Millamour also— Up to the eyes in love with Lady Bell.' There was a good deal of coquetry at times about Murphy-- he had productions by him, but who were to act them? Know your own Mind had been kept even longer than Horace requires, as the author assures us in his prologue. This I fancy is not to be understood as to its integrity, but that he had retained

Sir

a play upon the subject ten years in his possession. I make this remark because I incline to think Foote's Lady Kitty Crocodile the original of Murphy's Mrs. Bromley. The names of Murphy's comedy are for the most part significant or characteristic. We have Millamour, Dashwood, Malvil, Lovewit, and so on; but his very unamiable widow, as if to banish all idea of the Crocodile, is called, very insignificantly, Mrs. Bromley. Yet it is beyond all measure strange that what was, I have no doubt, designed to conceal the plagiarism, absolutely reveals it, and this name is found in a speech of Lady Kitty, who thus insults her protégée, Miss Lydall: There was your mother; did not I, by my own single interest, get her into the alms-house at Bromley?'

Foote was ready with this piece in the year 1776. It seems nearly incredible that any woman of rank should obtain an injunction, on the plea that Lady Kitty was a libel, and personal to herself. Did the Duchess of Kingston imagine that she monopolised all simulated affection for the dead, and the tyranny of patronage for the living? Foote at table, to be sure, might be more explicit than upon paper, and by mimicry leave no doubt at whom he was driving. But on the stage, who would think of appropriating vices so common?

'Who can come in, and say that I mean her?

When such a one as she, such is her neighbour.'
-As You Like It.

As the Trip to Calais was not printed until Colman, in 1778, started it, much augmented, as the Capuchin, Murphy derived his acquaintance with Lady Kitty from Foote's convivial display of her Ladyship at table; a mode of entertainment peculiar to himself, but which Doctor Johnson pronounced to be irresistible.

To return more particularly to Know your own Mind, Murphy after his long delay was at last unfortunate-for Woodward, who had hoped to close his stage career brilliantly in Dashwood, was seized about this time with the illness of which he died, and had, instead of the mimic, his mortal career to attend to.

It was once reported of Shakespeare, 'that he was obliged